Steve's birthday is not a coincidence // Vid rec: The War was in Color, a Steve Rogers vid
I keep seeing Avengers fic in which people--usually Tony1--think it's hilarious that Steve was born on July 4th. Like, these characters seem to believe it's a huge coincidence that Captain America would have the same birthday as the country America. And it just seems to me, well, wouldn't the more obvious answer be that (comics!)Steve Rogers is a patriot because he was born on July 4th? And that the Weasley twins are such big pranksters largely because they were born on April Fools'? That being born on a day dedicated to practical jokes might have encouraged and evolved their natural inclination for fun and jokes into, I dunno, a certain modus operandi and a very profitable business?
My head-canon is that you can't separate who Steve is from what day he was born. That is, the specific day he was born has informed his character, who he is, spangly outfit and all. Say you're a kid and on your birthday, every year, your mom bakes you a little cake or gives you a penny for candy AND the whole country spends the day waving flags and eating pie and setting off fireworks and talking about how this is the land of the free and whatnot. Wouldn't your little kid brain start making certain patriotic associations? And then you grow up and there's a war and maybe you join the army?
I mean, leaving aside the fact that these are fictional characters with birthdays purposefully chosen by their creators, doesn't that make a lot more sense than, whoops, big coincidence?
1 There's one fic I particularly enjoy in which Tony refuses to believe that Steve's birthday is actually on the fourth and he keeps celebrating it on random days of the year, certain he'll eventually hit on Steve's real birthday.
ALSO! Vid rec ganked from
giandujakiss!
Title: The War Was in Color
Vidder:
settiai
Music: "The War Was in Color" by Carbon Leaf
Spoilers: Captain America, Avengers, Avengers deleted scenes
Summary: "Sit down, son. Let me fill you in." Or, alternatively: STEVE *REALLY* FEEEEELS!
Wow, it's like this song was composed with Steve Rogers in mind or something!
settiai didn't try to do anything flashy, just carefully selected the clips that would accompany the song's lyrics in order to tell Steve's story. Very moving.
ETA: VERY VERY CAREFULLY SELECTED CLIPS. Holy crap, I just re-watched and there's SO MUCH in this vid. It's like meta in vid form. Like, okay, it might be the obvious choice for Tony to play the "grandson"--the kid asking his grandpa questions about the war, the person to whom the narrator is telling his story--but it works so beautifully that I don't think it could be anyone else. The lyrics are, "I see you found a box of my things." And it's literally a box! That Howard Stark found! And which Fury inherited from Howard and is investigating like it's something he pulled out a dusty attic. He puts it in front of Steve and demands (in his own way) answers from Steve. Then Tony, the younger generation, takes over for a couple of lines to ask ignorant questions. (I love how the singer changes his tone for those two lines, turns them brash and abrasive.) Tony's the one clueless about war, raised in peacetime and rich enough to never have to worry about putting on the uniform. Until very recently Tony's had a really naive understanding of war, of what soldiers do, the cost involved, even given his best friend is an Air Force officer. Also, he's the one with the geezer jokes, so yeah, perfect choice is perfect.
One thing I noticed this second time was the quick visual of Colonel Phillips in the past, then Fury in the future, both standing at a slight distance from Steve, looking at him, weighing him. The contexts are very different: in the first clip, Steve has just liberated the prisoners and Phillips is all "...you're still skinny." In the second clip, Fury's introducing himself and establishing himself as the new authority.
I also noticed that
settiai takes a somewhat literal approach to "colour". Not just with the b&w versus colour, or the Avengers and their bright costumes and Hulk's radioactive green skin and fiery explosions, but also inserting as much diversity as was possible in a canon that has, like, an overwhelming majority of white male actors/characters. I realise all the Commandos got coverage, but I have to imagine that
settiai made a point of covering all of them (and thereby getting in shots of Jim Morita and Gabe Jones). IMHO, any vid in which Sitwell got almost as much coverage as he did in the movie probably did it on purpose. (Plus, pairing Sitwell right on the word "colour"?) There's good coverage on Fury, there were successive clips of Maria (with another female agent behind her) and Natasha, plus a cool fade between Peggy and "Agent 13" that paired the Carter women with Howard and Tony, thus placing them on the same narrative level. Way to up the female quotient! Plus, great use of the news reports to add "colour" and expand the story to beyond just the narrator and his grandson, to shift the focus to the waitress and how it's about her and all the other civilians who benefit from a life possibly free of war, a "life full of colour".
Which, given that war was in colour and life is also in colour, makes me wonder if there's just too much bleed-through between one state and the other. ...and now I'm just pulling stuff out of my ass, I think.
There's more, like the fantastic use of "I'll start at the end" clips, but I need to watch for a third time before I can take more notes.
ETA2: I love how, for all that this is a very pointed story that Steve is telling, it's also a story Steve is choosing to tell. It's a dialogue, not actually a straight-up monologue. First came the question. It's not about shutting down the younger generation, it's not about turning away from ignorance (Tony the grandson) or getting lost in the past (Steve's flashbacks to the war in colour). Steve wants to explain the past to Tony, wants someone to understand. We don't know if the narrator gets that understanding from his grandson, but IMHO the visuals are telling us that Steve does get it from his new team--or at least has the potential to get it. Nothing's the same, obviously, and yet everything is. There are losses in the past (Bucky) and there are losses in the present (Coulson), there are comrades in the past (Commandos) and there are comrades in the present (Avengers). It's a team, fellow soldiers who will have your back, laying down their lives together for innocent civilians. And the war is the same, which given what I said two paragraphs ago, seems to imply that war is ever-present, despite what we may hope.
I love how, on one of the iterations of "where to begin / start with the end", Steve is riding his motorcycle and the light behind him is green. It's a "no, duh" on a couple of levels--Joss wasn't going to film him sitting on it parked at a red, because what kind of message would that send? But it works, it's the obvious "he's moving on" visual metaphor and it's perfect for that line because it's an ending and a beginning.
The folder closing on 4F and opening on 1A was lovely.
ETA3: Skin: Peggy, "Agent 13" and the fake NYC, Coulson, Steve (and this time it's "my skin", not "the skin"), Bucky and Steve in b&w.
I wonder if
settiai was trying to parallel Bucky and Tony the way she paralleled Phillips and Fury, because in the last set of clips after the final chorus there are two clips in succession: Steve and Bucky facing each other at the pub, then Steve and Tony facing each other in the SHIELD plane.
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My head-canon is that you can't separate who Steve is from what day he was born. That is, the specific day he was born has informed his character, who he is, spangly outfit and all. Say you're a kid and on your birthday, every year, your mom bakes you a little cake or gives you a penny for candy AND the whole country spends the day waving flags and eating pie and setting off fireworks and talking about how this is the land of the free and whatnot. Wouldn't your little kid brain start making certain patriotic associations? And then you grow up and there's a war and maybe you join the army?
I mean, leaving aside the fact that these are fictional characters with birthdays purposefully chosen by their creators, doesn't that make a lot more sense than, whoops, big coincidence?
1 There's one fic I particularly enjoy in which Tony refuses to believe that Steve's birthday is actually on the fourth and he keeps celebrating it on random days of the year, certain he'll eventually hit on Steve's real birthday.
ALSO! Vid rec ganked from
giandujakiss!
Title: The War Was in Color
Vidder:
settiai
Music: "The War Was in Color" by Carbon Leaf
Spoilers: Captain America, Avengers, Avengers deleted scenes
Summary: "Sit down, son. Let me fill you in." Or, alternatively: STEVE *REALLY* FEEEEELS!
Wow, it's like this song was composed with Steve Rogers in mind or something!
settiai didn't try to do anything flashy, just carefully selected the clips that would accompany the song's lyrics in order to tell Steve's story. Very moving.
ETA: VERY VERY CAREFULLY SELECTED CLIPS. Holy crap, I just re-watched and there's SO MUCH in this vid. It's like meta in vid form. Like, okay, it might be the obvious choice for Tony to play the "grandson"--the kid asking his grandpa questions about the war, the person to whom the narrator is telling his story--but it works so beautifully that I don't think it could be anyone else. The lyrics are, "I see you found a box of my things." And it's literally a box! That Howard Stark found! And which Fury inherited from Howard and is investigating like it's something he pulled out a dusty attic. He puts it in front of Steve and demands (in his own way) answers from Steve. Then Tony, the younger generation, takes over for a couple of lines to ask ignorant questions. (I love how the singer changes his tone for those two lines, turns them brash and abrasive.) Tony's the one clueless about war, raised in peacetime and rich enough to never have to worry about putting on the uniform. Until very recently Tony's had a really naive understanding of war, of what soldiers do, the cost involved, even given his best friend is an Air Force officer. Also, he's the one with the geezer jokes, so yeah, perfect choice is perfect.
One thing I noticed this second time was the quick visual of Colonel Phillips in the past, then Fury in the future, both standing at a slight distance from Steve, looking at him, weighing him. The contexts are very different: in the first clip, Steve has just liberated the prisoners and Phillips is all "...you're still skinny." In the second clip, Fury's introducing himself and establishing himself as the new authority.
I also noticed that
settiai takes a somewhat literal approach to "colour". Not just with the b&w versus colour, or the Avengers and their bright costumes and Hulk's radioactive green skin and fiery explosions, but also inserting as much diversity as was possible in a canon that has, like, an overwhelming majority of white male actors/characters. I realise all the Commandos got coverage, but I have to imagine that
settiai made a point of covering all of them (and thereby getting in shots of Jim Morita and Gabe Jones). IMHO, any vid in which Sitwell got almost as much coverage as he did in the movie probably did it on purpose. (Plus, pairing Sitwell right on the word "colour"?) There's good coverage on Fury, there were successive clips of Maria (with another female agent behind her) and Natasha, plus a cool fade between Peggy and "Agent 13" that paired the Carter women with Howard and Tony, thus placing them on the same narrative level. Way to up the female quotient! Plus, great use of the news reports to add "colour" and expand the story to beyond just the narrator and his grandson, to shift the focus to the waitress and how it's about her and all the other civilians who benefit from a life possibly free of war, a "life full of colour".
Which, given that war was in colour and life is also in colour, makes me wonder if there's just too much bleed-through between one state and the other. ...and now I'm just pulling stuff out of my ass, I think.
There's more, like the fantastic use of "I'll start at the end" clips, but I need to watch for a third time before I can take more notes.
ETA2: I love how, for all that this is a very pointed story that Steve is telling, it's also a story Steve is choosing to tell. It's a dialogue, not actually a straight-up monologue. First came the question. It's not about shutting down the younger generation, it's not about turning away from ignorance (Tony the grandson) or getting lost in the past (Steve's flashbacks to the war in colour). Steve wants to explain the past to Tony, wants someone to understand. We don't know if the narrator gets that understanding from his grandson, but IMHO the visuals are telling us that Steve does get it from his new team--or at least has the potential to get it. Nothing's the same, obviously, and yet everything is. There are losses in the past (Bucky) and there are losses in the present (Coulson), there are comrades in the past (Commandos) and there are comrades in the present (Avengers). It's a team, fellow soldiers who will have your back, laying down their lives together for innocent civilians. And the war is the same, which given what I said two paragraphs ago, seems to imply that war is ever-present, despite what we may hope.
I love how, on one of the iterations of "where to begin / start with the end", Steve is riding his motorcycle and the light behind him is green. It's a "no, duh" on a couple of levels--Joss wasn't going to film him sitting on it parked at a red, because what kind of message would that send? But it works, it's the obvious "he's moving on" visual metaphor and it's perfect for that line because it's an ending and a beginning.
The folder closing on 4F and opening on 1A was lovely.
ETA3: Skin: Peggy, "Agent 13" and the fake NYC, Coulson, Steve (and this time it's "my skin", not "the skin"), Bucky and Steve in b&w.
I wonder if
settiai was trying to parallel Bucky and Tony the way she paralleled Phillips and Fury, because in the last set of clips after the final chorus there are two clips in succession: Steve and Bucky facing each other at the pub, then Steve and Tony facing each other in the SHIELD plane.
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